In the modern days of technology, where data can be streamed and made available in the clouds, video games have certainly come a long way.
Regardless, consoles are still popular.
Tracing back to their origins, no one can forget the Super Nintendo Entertainment System console. The 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in Europe and Oceania, and 1993 in South America.
Super Nintendo can be credited for popularizing video games and rose future generation of gamers
The console was wildly popular, with more than 1,700 games were officially released for it.
And this time, all of the English-language manuals for the console have been uploaded to the internet for everyone to see and read, for free.
Almost all Super Nintendo games came with a manual inside their case.
Sometimes, the manuals can even come with lots of information information.
For example, there are manuals that show users where they would find the buttons to push and how the console works. The manual can also include the literal buttons to push on the controller for each game.
Things can go beyond that, as some manuals can also include the backstory of the game, and even a map, or some other details.
"And if you're really lucky, you get a little bit of a walkthrough that would tell you, like, the first 10% of the game," said Peebs, a streamer at Twitch.
"We had wondered, some of these games, had anyone ever even beaten them before? They were so weird and obscure or difficult," said Peebs whose real name is Kerry Hay.
Hays did a thorough job in gathering all the manuals, scanning them, and made them available online.
This online shrine emits nearly noxious levels of nostalgia, tracing the evolution of some of the video game world's most iconic characters and stories.
Modern games typically have a cutscenes to describe the story and reveal the plots. What's more, players can quickly go online to visit forums and streaming platforms to see games and their gameplay, without having to ever buy them.
But in the old days, gamers didn't experience this kind of luxury.
In the 90s, during the days of Super Nintendo, the internet was still a project by some researchers and governments. As a matter of fact, the first-ever photo uploaded to the internet were done in 1992 by the researchers themselves.
At that time, all games were offline.
Without the internet, gamers had to see the games gameplay with their own eyes. And because games at the time weren't sold with enough storage medium to include videos and sounds, and also because the technologies were only able to provide functionalities and rarely cosmetics, manuals were created.
Nowadays, vintage games complete with a paper manual can be hard to come by.
This is why Hays collected the copies of every single Super Nintendo manual in the English language so everyone can enjoy them for free.
"Preservation to me is everybody has access to this stuff when they want it and where they want it," he said. "It would be lovely to get paid, you know, a standard paycheck for this. That's just not what it's about," he said.
As a video game lover, Hays said that he did it for the good of the art.
